The Inheritance

A Hex & Hearth Anthology short story

Sylvie Calloway left Driftwood Pointe fourteen years ago and never looked back.

When her grandmother June dies, Sylvie returns home for one reason: settle the estate, sell the family cottage, and leave before old memories—and old magic—can pull her under again.

But Driftwood Pointe has always had a way of keeping what belongs to it.

The cottage still hums with June’s presence. The greenhouse is filled with impossible plants and unanswered questions. And Jonah Beaumont—the quiet, steady caretaker who spent the last nineteen months tending June’s beloved property—seems to understand the things Sylvie has spent years trying to forget.

As they work together to fulfill the final conditions of June’s will, strange things begin to awaken. Ancient vines bloom out of season. Long-buried family magic stirs beneath the town’s foundations. And Sylvie discovers that the inheritance waiting for her isn’t a house or a piece of land.

It’s a life she was never meant to abandon.

But opening her heart to the town—and to Jonah—means facing the grief she’s been running from for years.

And some gifts are too powerful to leave behind.